Why Some Children Create Imaginary Friends During the Grieving Process

Christina hadn't even turned four yet when her brother died and she fell asleep during most of the funeral. Christina didn't cry but she acted out in a way that most people wouldn't understand. Christina began to have an imaginary friend she called Gaje, this was her brother's name, and her imaginary friend would often do the many things that her brother had once done with her. I didn't understand it at first but then I later realized that this was her grieving process.

Christina helped me to understand what kind of affect that loosing a sibling could have on someone her age. She helped me to understand the grieving process in a young child and to begin to help her heal.

Even though a child as young as a toddler's age does not show any type of remorse for the loss of a loved one, this does not mean that they are not in the grieving process themselves.

Some people tend to overlook the feelings of a child because they assume that they do not understand what is going on but children handle grieving differently than an adult would.

Having an imaginary friend, is one way for them to deal with grief. A child this young may replace their sibling or loved one with an imaginary friend so that they can handle it better.

I called up a councilor after this had went on for a long time and the councilor explained to me that a lot of children will create these so-called imaginary friends or sometimes say that they have seen their loved one. This is just a child's way of dealing with the death and that as time goes by, this child will slowly began to focus on reality once again.

The worse thing for anyone to do to a child, who has created the imaginary friend, is to take it away from them or become angry. If your child claims to see their dead loved one, you shouldn't feed into their imagination but instead, try to help them during the grieving process.